


Alone Together

by SirMuffinsworth



Series: To Feel Loved [1]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Break Up, Cheating, F/M, Fade to Black, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Use, Maki isn't an assassin, Making Out, Other than Kaito and Kaede the V3 cast are nice friends, Read with caution if you like Saimatsu or Kaimaki, Rebound, Revenge Sex, Shared Angst, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, hurt little comfort, shared pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 21:07:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30027849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SirMuffinsworth/pseuds/SirMuffinsworth
Summary: Kaede and Kaito betrayed them in the most profound way possible.Two people, now alone, find that they can be alone together.
Relationships: Akamatsu Kaede/Momota Kaito (minor), Akamatsu Kaede/Saihara Shuichi (past), Amami Rantaro/Chabashira Tenko (implied), Harukawa Maki/Momota Kaito (past), Harukawa Maki/Saihara Shuichi
Series: To Feel Loved [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2212344
Comments: 10
Kudos: 24





	Alone Together

(Today 9:47) Shuichi: Good morning <3

(Today 11:03) Shuichi: U ok? I know u were at Ibuki’s party last night, you sleeping off a hangover?

(Today 11:12) Shuichi: Lemme know if you need me to come over with headache meds and cuddles

(Today 2:46) Shuichi: Kaede, starting to get worried haha. U alive over there?

(Today 5:33) Called Kaede 2 time(s), no answer

\-----

“Did she lose her phone or something?” Shuichi wondered, concerned. This was the longest in the year they had been dating that Kaede had gone without texting him back at least to say good morning. He assumed there was a good reason, but he wasn’t quite sure what it could be.

The boy had already combed his dorm room for any sign of his girlfriend’s phone, thinking she might have accidentally forgotten it there when she had visited last, but he had found nothing. He sighed, debating calling again just to be sure, when his phone actually started buzzing on its own.

CALLER ID: Kaede <3

“Finally!” he exclaimed as he hit the ‘accept call’ button, holding the phone up to his ear, “Hey, Kaede, good to finally hear from you. What’s been up?”

“Actually, this is just Kaede’s phone,” Shuichi heard the voice of Tenko, a mutual friend of theirs and one of Kaede’s roommates at their shared apartment, “When you called, her ringtone went off, and we found it under one of the couch cushions.”

“Oh,” Shuichi frowned, “I guess that explains why she hasn’t been answering all day. Is she there with you?”

“Nope, haven’t seen her all day around here. I assume she isn’t with you?”

“No, I haven’t heard from her since she left my dorm room to go to Ibuki’s party last night. I’m not sure where she could be, maybe we should call Ibuki? See if she stayed over there?”

“Maybe. You don’t have Ibuki’s phone number, right? I’ll call her and let you know.”

“Thanks, Tenko,” Shuichi sighed before hanging up. At least that was one mystery solved, but he was still no closer to knowing where Kaede actually was. Kaede usually wasn’t one for drinking, so if she was sleeping off some kind of hangover, it must have been quite the interesting party. Shuichi had opted out of attending alongside her using the excuse of extensive homework, but it was honestly just because parties weren’t his scene.

“Maybe I should call Sayaka…” he pondered, “Those two are close, and I actually do have her number from that group project a while back…”

Deciding against it, not wanting to bother Sayaka on such trivial grounds, Shuichi decided to just wait for Tenko to call back. He turned to his open laptop and began thumbing through social media pages. As he scrolled, something popped up from a certain Leon Kuwata. A poor quality selfie of the punk-rocker displayed him sticking his tongue through two of his fingers in a rather misogynistic manner, but the caption was what caught his eye.

\----  
Truth or dare gettin spicy up 2nite! Send me reqs!  
\----

Unsurprisingly, the image only had 2 likes and a single comment from Aoi Asahina, stating “I dare you to go fuck yourself”. However, Shuichi noticed something in the background of Leon’s image. While the man himself was out of frame, Shuichi could see the telltale flapping purple jacket of Kaito Momota, a close friend of his, sitting next to Leon in what seemed to be a circle. 

“So Kaito was there, was he?” the boy wondered, continuing to scroll, “Can’t imagine he managed to drag Maki to something like that, so I guess he went alone too…”

Shuichi’s phone buzzed again, signalling an incoming call from Kaede, or in this case, presumably Tenko.

“Hey,” he said as he picked up, “Any news from Ibuki?”

“Yeah,” Tenko replied, “Ibuki said that Kaede got a drive home from Kaito, but that’s impossible, seeing as she isn’t here. You should call him, doesn’t he live in the same dorm building as you?”

“Will do,” he nodded, “Thanks again, Tenks.”

“HEY!” the girl fumed on the other end of the line, “Only Himiko gets to call me that, male!”

“But… don’t you let Rantaro call you tha---”

“NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!”

The girl promptly hung up, leaving Shuichi with frankly more questions than answers, but he sighed and prepared to phone Kaito. He pressed the ‘call’ button, and at this point, the fact that it went straight to an answering machine was hardly a surprise. Why would it be that easy?

Shuichi sighed and unceremoniously tossed his phone onto his bed. One of them would get back to him eventually, he supposed.

About fifteen minutes later, he heard a buzz that signaled that somebody was at the door. He blinked, surprised, and pulled the door open, revealing a certain blonde at long last.

“Kaede!” he exclaimed, “There you are. I’ve been trying to contact you, and Tenko’s been worried. Are you alright?”

“Hey… Shuichi…” there was something a little off about the girl’s tone, and Shuichi noticed that she wasn’t meeting his eyes, “Can I… um… come in, please?”

“Of course,” the boy cocked his head, confused, as he gestured for Kaede to come inside. She took a few tentative steps in, shutting the door behind her, before shakily turning back to Shuichi.

“Kaede… is something wrong?” he asked, “You’re acting weird. Are you alright?”

“Everything’s fine!” the blonde replied far too quickly, before correcting herself in a soft voice, “Erm, well… actually, that’s a lie. Things… they aren’t really fine.”

“Is there… something I can do?”

“Maybe… just, uh… I have something to tell you, and… you might want to sit down.”

Shuichi blinked, but complied as he sat down on the edge of his bed. He had absolutely no idea what was going on, but he didn’t like it one bit. Kaede was usually much more boisterous and well-presenced than this. She seemed to be radiating nervousness and… something else he couldn’t quite place.

“Um… well, you know that I went to Ibuki’s party last night?” Kaede began.

Shuichi nodded, unsure of where this was going.

“Well… I ran into Kaito while I was there, and Maki didn’t come with him, so we were just hanging out…”

“Yeah, I figured Maki wouldn’t go for that type of thing,” Shuichi nodded. 

“Yeah, well… Kaito and I kinda got roped into a game of Truth or Dare with everybody there, and you could choose not to do whatever it was but you had to drink as a penalty…”

Shuichi rolled his eyes. This is why the typical college social life’s appeals continued to escape him.

“So you’ve been sleeping off a hangover this whole time, then?” he asked.

“No…” she replied softly, “Well, I mean, yes, but… Shuichi, please don’t say anything until I’m done, okay? Then you can ask any questions and say anything you want to, but not until I’m done, okay?”

The raven-haired boy gulped, nodding slowly. Oh, he really did not like the atmosphere that his dorm room had become. Oppressive, one might call it. 

“Look, it started out so stupid…” Kaede shook her head, “It was just… dumbass crap, really immature stuff. I ended up drinking to avoid telling them who my first time was, and a whole bunch of other dumb stuff… I think they started targeting me since I’m so easily embarrassed by that stuff…”

The blonde took a moment to regain her voice, which had trailed off into a whisper by the end.

“Eventually… I had had so much to drink that I slipped up. Junko picked me, and I said truth, and she asked me if I had to kiss anybody in our group other than you, who it would be, and I… I said Kaito.”

Shuichi felt a bead of sweat trickling down his face. He couldn’t blame her for that, Kaito was hardly an unattractive person, and Shuichi was hardly closed-minded enough to get offended by something like that. Nothing too terrible so far, but---

“And then, uh… Ibuki dared me to actually kiss him, and… well…”

That one hit Shuichi like a brick. So Kaede had kissed Kaito because of a drunken haze. He… well, he obviously wasn’t happy about that, but he knew Kaede loved him. After all, she was apologizing right now, the day after it happened, which had to mean something. Assuming she was finished, Shuichi made to say something, before something gave him pause.

Kaede was… crying. The streams of tears were small, but consistent as they fell down her cheeks. Words of comfort bubbled up in Shuichi’s throat, but were silenced by the blonde continuing her story.

“And… I don’t know if it was just the drugs, but…” she sobbed, “I don’t know what happened, Shuichi! I promise… I… I don’t know why we did it, I swear!”

“Did what, Kaede!?” Shuichi finally lost his patience, “What did you do!?”

“W-well… when I was k-kissing him, I… I d-don’t know why, but… I d-dragged him to his c-car and… well… we…”

Kaede sniffled, reaching out instinctively for Shuichi with teary eyes. As a dark hole plumed in his gut, Shuichi found himself shrinking away from her touch.

“Kaede,” his voice was a firm as he could keep it, “Just, for fuck’s sake, tell me what happened between you two.”

The blonde fell to her knees as she sobbed, “W-we… we… we had sex, Shuichi, God, I’m so sorry… I swear, I promise, I didn’t mean…”

And that was about all Shuichi heard. 

Kaede had… cheated on him? With one of his best friends? No… no, that didn’t make sense. They wouldn’t have. This was some elaborate prank, probably set up by Kokichi, right? He knew for a fact that a game of truth or dare had been involved, that meant Kokichi had probably dared Kaede to confess to doing something like this she didn’t do, right?

And then Shuichi remembered what Tenko had told him over the phone.

“Ibuki said that Kaede got a drive home from Kaito, but that’s impossible, seeing as she isn’t here.”

“Kaede…” Shuichi’s voice was low, “...you have one chance to let me in on this, if this is some kind of twisted joke or prank.”

“I’m s-sorry, Shuichi…” Kaede bawled on the floor, “I… I still love you! I… I d-don’t know why I did it… please, you have to b-believe me, I don’t know---”

“Get out.”

The blonde blinked, her gaze whipping up to him like she was a puppy he had just kicked, “Shui...chi?”

The raven-haired boy could feel his shoulder’s trembling as he met her watery gaze. This was the woman who had taught him how to be strong, how to stand up for himself. How to have confidence in himself. The woman that he had loved.

The web of emotions pervading his mind was hardly simple and comprehensible, but Shuichi knew that love was not a very large part of it.

“Get out,” he repeated, “Get. The hell. Out.”

“P-please, S-Shuichi…” Kaede whimpered, reaching for him with a shaky, desperate hand that churned his stomach, “Y-you can’t, please don’t--”

“Don’t touch me,” he whipped his leg away from where the girl had been reaching for it, “Get out, Kaede, I don’t want to see you anymore. Get out.”

“N-no…”

“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY DORM, YOU FUCKING CHEAT! FUCK OFF!”

Shuichi’s shout startled Kaede to her feet as she observed him like a gazelle might observe a lion.

“I s-still love you, S-Shuichi…” she gave her final, pitiful attempt, but those words coming from her voice had already been stained beyond recognition.

“FUCK YOU!” he screamed, knowing full well that his neighbors would probably file noise complaints, yet somehow not particularly caring, “FUCK OFF BACK TO KAITO, THAT BACKSTABBING SON OF A BITCH CAN HAVE YOU! YOU DESERVE EACH OTHER!”

Tears that his shattered heart could only interpret as crocodilian poured down Kaede’s face as she scampered out of his dorm room, the door swinging shut behind her as she ran down the hallway. Shuichi barely recalled telling his fist to move, yet it still broke a substantial hole in the drywall beside his bed.

“D-dammit…” he sobbed, tears of his own falling to the floor beneath him. Shuichi wasn’t quite sure how, but he made it into a ball beneath his blankets, clutching his bruised fist and crying into the mattress for what felt like hours. 

What was it that he was feeling? Shuichi had never really experienced a breakup before, Kaede had been his first… well, everything. His first crush, his first confession, his first girlfriend, his first kiss, his first time, and now… his first heartbreak. All the memories of the past year together… should he feel sad that they would never make anymore? Kaede was a liar. A cheater. She said that she loved him, she had said that countless times, but apparently it had all been lies. 

There was anger there, for sure. Hurt. Betrayal, of course. Was there remorse? Maybe a smidgen. Should he have given her a second chance? Maybe. Maybe she didn’t deserve that. There were drugs involved, neither she nor Kaito were presumably in their right minds…

Kaito. Ugh, right. Kaito too. One of Shuichi’s closest friends, the “hero” to his “sidekick”. Just another backstabbing, lying, and apparently, cuckolding traitor. The image of Kaede and Kaito together in the intimate way that Shuichi thought was something she saved only for him… it ruined everything. It ruined him. It made him want to vomit.

A flash of rage shot through him as he heard his cell phone buzz with a text alert. He very much did not want to deal with shutting Kaito out of his life right now, too, that was a conversation that he would have to prepare for, if only to go into it with the emotional stability to not kick the bastard’s teeth in.

A hand reached out from his ball of blanketed safety to retrieve his phone, reading the text displayed on screen.

\----  
(Today 6:31) Maki: Hey, Shuichi.  
\----

Maki. Right. Shuichi wasn’t the only one that Kaito and Kaede’s little fling had made a cuckold of. Still, was Shuichi really prepared to have a conversation with anybody about this, let alone his one friend that was probably just as wounded as he was? Did she even know about this yet?

He responded anyway.

~~~~~~~~~~  
20 MINUTES EARLIER  
~~~~~~~~~~

“Maki-roll, please, just put down the---”

“DON’T YOU MAKI-ROLL ME, YOU MOTHERFUCKER,” Maki screamed, brandishing a kitchen knife in shaky hands, “YOU… I TRUSTED YOU!”

“I know, Maki-r--- Maki!” Kaito exclaimed, holding his hands up defensibly and taking a few steps back, “I’m sorry, alright!? Look, there was alcohol involved, and me and Kaede didn’t know what was gonna happen until… well, it happened!”

“SHUT UP!” she exclaimed, “YOU KNOW AS WELL AS I FUCKING DO THAT ALCOHOL CAN’T MAKE YOU DO ANYTHING YOU DIDN’T WANT TO DO ANYWAY, BASTARD!”

“Maki…” Kaito’s voice was strained, desperately searching for the right words, “Please, I… I wanna make this right with you, okay!? Just give me a chance! I love y---”

“Don’t,” the girl’s voice was cold, “Don’t you dare finish that fucking sentence, you piece of shit. If you loved me, you wouldn’t have FUCKED that FUCKING PIANO WHORE! HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME!? TO SHUICHI!? WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF SICK FUCK ARE YOU TO DO THIS!?”

“Maki…” Kaito strained as a single tear rolled down his tensed cheek. 

“You know what?” Maki’s voice snapped into a much calmer state, presumably entering whatever the emotional equivalent of trauma shock was, “Don’t answer that. Because then, I’d have to hear your voice. Just get out of my goddamn apartment, you piece of shit. I never want to see you again.”

Kaito’s fists were trembling at his sides as he hung his head in shame. Maki wasn’t sure what was going on inside his head, but frankly, she was beyond the point of caring.

“Just…” he muttered eventually, “...don’t tell Shuichi, okay? That’s Kaede’s decision to make, and I… I don’t want to blow them up too, if she doesn’t want to tell him…”

“WHAT!?” Maki exclaimed, “You don’t want me to tell Shuichi!? What, does the idea of your FRIEND humping your SLOPPY SECONDS GET YOU OFF, YOU BASTARD!? SHUICHI DESERVES THE TRUTH! HE’S---”

Maki took a second to form the sentence she wanted to cast Kaito, the first person she had ever truly trusted, aside with.

“Shuichi is the only person that I still trust,” she spat, “And if I ever see you so much as looking his way again, I swear to god, I will flay your dick and turn it into a sock puppet. Never speak to either of us again, Kaito. Get the fuck out of my apartment. Now.”

Kaito looked like he wanted to say something else. His mouth opened, his tongue moved, but whatever it was died in his throat as he finally met her eyes once more. Whatever he had been expecting, malice or hatred, he didn’t find it there.

Maki just looked at Kaito like a cockroach she was preparing to squash, but even comparing him to a bug at that point was being unfair to insects everywhere, and Maki respected Gonta too much to do that. Kaito just shook his head, let out a small ‘dammit’, and swung the door shut behind him.

The first thing Maki did was put the kitchen knife down. The second thing she did was pile all of the clothes and belongings that Kaito had left at her apartment over their one-year relationship into the trash bin, pour a flask of vodka over it, and toss a match in. 

As Maki watched the selfie of her and Kaito looking up at the stars together, the one she had mounted in a frame above her bed, go up in smoke, she sent a text to the only person in the world she knew she could still trust.

\----  
(Today 6:31) Maki: Hey, Shuichi.

(Today 6:32) Shuichi: Hey, Maki.

(Today 6:32) Maki: You hear about last night?

(Today 6:32) Shuichi: You mean Kaede and Kaito? Yeah, she just told me.

(Today 6:32) Maki: What did you do?

(Today 6:33) Shuichi: Told her to fuck off. We’re done. You?

(Today 6:33) Maki: Same. Told that POS I’d skin his dick if he tried to talk to either of us again.

(Today 6:33) Shuichi: Graphic, but warranted. Wanna meet up?

(Today 6:33) Maki: Sure. Milkshakes at DQ?

(Today 6:34) Shuichi: See you in ten.  
\----

Maki didn’t have any makeup to fix, so she just left right then and there. She knew Shuichi’s preference in milkshake (strawberry, for some ungodly reason), so she would preorder for him. Whether they were meeting up to just lean on one another for a while, possibly hatch some kind of revenge, she wasn’t really sure. She just wanted to see a friendly face.

~~~~~~~~~~

Maki was already waiting at their booth when Shuichi stumbled into the cool air of the Dairy Queen. He slid into the seat across from her, taking a sip of the strawberry milkshake that was already sitting there waiting for him.

“Hey,” the girl said, voice even as she nursed her Reece’s milkshake between her hands.

“Hey,” he greeted back.

Met with a somber silence, the pair of them just sat idly for a while, occasionally taking a sip of their drinks. While the silence was hardly what one could refer to as comfortable, neither of them quite felt the need to fill it. They were busy digesting, and falling apart in their own ways, and it just helped slightly to have the face of somebody doing the exact same thing staring back at them from across the table. 

Shuichi realized that he was crying only after he noticed drops of water begin to splash and ripple the surface of the pink foam he was drinking. Maki reached across the table and placed a hand on his wrist, squeezing ever so slightly too hard, but he didn’t mind. Maybe her firm grip would keep him from entirely crumbling to dust, at least for a little while longer.

“If they didn’t even think of us at all,” he asked softly, “Would that make it worse or better?”

Maki frowned, thinking for a moment, before sighing and replying, “Better. It would make it better.”

“How so?”

“If they thought about us, and still did it, then it means we really didn’t mean anything to them at all. It’s better if they just forgot about us until it was over.”

Shuichi felt a rueful chuckle bubbling up in his throat. She was right. He wouldn’t exactly call that “better” so much as “a pitiful smidgen less terrible”, but she was right. Maki was always right.

Well, except when she had asked Kaito out all that time ago. She had been wrong then.

“What are we going to do?” Maki asked, stirring her milkshake slowly with her metal straw.

“Finish our semester,” Shuichi replied sadly, shrugging, “Then finish our college careers, and… get better?”

“How?”

“Well, if I was Rantaro, I’d probably say something along the lines of ‘it’ll hurt a little bit less every day, just keep going’, but I won’t.”

Maki’s mouth curled into a sarcastic sneer, “Should we text him about this? He’s the expert at getting his heart broken out of all of us after all, he’d take our side.”

“Actually…” Shuichi pulled out his phone and flicked over to their group chat, with all the members of their old high school class in it. Preceding a long line of shock and outrage from their friends was a text from Shuichi that made Maki grin evilly.

\----  
(Today 6:38) Shuichi: FYI everybody, Kaede and Kaito cheated on Maki and I with each other last night, so both of those relationships are dead. Pick your sides now, because this group chat isn’t holding this group together for much longer.  
\----

Scrolling down, it seemed that the bitch and bastard in question were the only ones, save Maki, who had notifications from that chat turned off, who hadn’t responded. Their classmates seemed to be rallying around the two of them in the booth, with even Tenko turning on Kaede with a surprisingly brutal “I expected better from you”.

“I’m not usually one for starting drama about crap like this,” Shuichi shook his head as he tucked his phone back away, “But that felt good to send.”

“Oh, let them get humiliated for it,” Maki rolled her eyes, “Least that they deserve.”

Shuichi just grunted in agreement, sipping from his milkshake once more.

Maki drummed her fingers on the table, still stewing in her own rage and anguish. Obviously, Kaito’s betrayal hurt, and Kaede wasn’t exactly painless either. Maki had never been friends with the pianist, at least nothing more than friendly acquaintances, but it pained her to see Shuichi so broken by both his best friend and first love stabbing him in the back. After all, Shuichi was one of--- no, Shuichi was her best friend, as of half an hour ago. The best person she knew.

“Should we get revenge?” she asked, not fully serious or fully joking.

“How would you propose we do that?” the boy asked, “I’ve already exposed them to everybody. Beyond that, there isn’t really anything we could do that isn’t way too childish or way too illegal.”

“I could always burn their houses down,” she offered.

“Tenko lives with Kaede, and she’s innocent, so no.”

“That’s your only problem with what I just said? I was joking, Shuichi.”

“No you weren’t.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

The two shared a little smirk from across the table, and suddenly, neither of them felt quite so alone in that little booth of theirs.

Well, they were still alone, but maybe they could be alone together.

“I just can’t believe I didn’t see this coming,” Maki scoffed, “Did you ever pick up on anything between them?”

Shuichi shook his head, “No, but I’m hardly attentive when it comes to stuff like that.”

The girl sighed, “Me too, I guess. Kaito was the first person I ever really even trusted, let alone fell in love with. And now…”

“...you have me,” Shuichi finished, “And our friends, still, remember.”

“So I just have you, then,” she smiled sadly, “You’re much closer to the others than I am, you know. I’ve always been a wallflower in our group, remember.”

“Don’t you go shopping with Rantaro and Tsumugi every first Saturday of the month?”

“...fair point.”

“And I seem to recall Miu and Keebo letting you sleep on their couch for a while when your apartment got closed for fumigating and Kaito was out of town.”

“...got me there, too.”

“And I’m pretty sure you and Tenko synchronized your trips to the dojo so that you two could hang---”

“Alright, Shuichi,” Maki sighed, a light smile gracing her lips, “I have friends that aren’t you. I get it.”

The boy gave her a cute, playful wink as he sipped his milkshake softly.

Cute…?

Maki chose not to examine that thought just yet.

“You walked here, right?” Shuichi asked.

Maki nodded, “Yeah, my apartment is about a ten-minute walk from here.”

Shuichi winced as he observed the snow falling lazily down outside, given the mid-February weather. 

“I drove here, I’ll drive you back,” he said.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that, Shuichi.”

“No, I don’t, but I want to. We gotta stick together, Maki, alright?”

Maki’s cold, bitter, broken heart warmed ever so slightly as the boy offered her a slanted smile, and she simply nodded, “Fine, but I paid for your milkshake, so I’m not giving you gas money.”

“Of course,” Shuichi chuckled, and the two of them tossed their finished cups into the trash and headed out into the snow.

“Music?” he asked once they were both buckled in.

“God, no,” the girl shook her head, “All they play on the damn radio is bullshit love songs, and I just can’t take that right now.”

Shuichi nodded, “Good point.”

The drive back to Maki’s apartment was short, as traffic was pretty good, given the snow keeping people off the roads. Shuichi could have just dropped her off and headed out back to his own home, but he decided to get out of the car and walk with her inside, at least until they reached her apartment. He really just knew that he’d be crushed into the floor all over again once he returned home to his dorm room and was forced to lay eyes on that damned bed all over again, and maybe he just wanted to not be alone for a little while longer. 

Maki turned the corner into her hallway before he did, and Shuichi almost collided into her as she froze in mid-stride.

“What. The fuck. Are you doing at my door.” Maki asked someone he couldn’t see.

“M-Maki…” an all-too familiar voice replied in a strained whimper.

Oh, for fuck’s sake, he was not prepared to deal with this. Shuichi turned to leave right the way he had come, but Maki’s arm whipped out and helf him there, dragging him into view of the hallway.

Kaede’s eyes shrank in horror as she saw that Maki wasn’t alone, “O-oh, S-Shuichi…”

Shuichi didn’t answer her. He couldn’t even look at her.

“I won’t repeat myself again,” Maki spat, “What. the fuck. Explain yourself, Kaede.”

“I-I wanted…” the pianist’s eyes were getting watery all over again, “T-to apologize to you…”

“Well, you can save it,” the girl shook her head, “I have nothing to say to you, and I’d rather not have to listen to your fucking voice.”

Kaede swallowed roughly, her gaze flitting between Shuichi and Maki, “I… I know I d-deserve that, and… I know that n-nothing I could ever do or say could p-possibly ever m-make up for what I’ve done, but…”

“But nothing,” Shuichi found himself saying, his voice dull and lifeless as he still couldn’t bring himself to look at the girl, “Just leave. You aren’t wanted.”

“I-I just want---”

“We don’t care what you want,” Maki shook her head, “Some things are just unforgivable, no matter what.”

Kaede was desperate now, her shoulders hunching up as she cried, “P-please, Shuichi… I know what we had will never c-come back, and that… that breaks me more than you know, b-but… if you ever l-loved me, even if you d-don’t now… please hear me out, just this one last time…”

Maki whipped her head to look at Shuichi, whose eyes had widened in a mixture of shock, anger, and sadness. Kaede was playing to his sympathies, and if she knew it or not didn’t matter. Shuichi was her ally, Kaede was her enemy, and Maki knew she couldn’t afford to allow whatever shit that the pianist intended to spill get aired. It would only hurt Shuichi more. The detective was already on his last legs, the closure that was being offered wasn’t nearly worth the price of whatever stability the boy had left.

Still though, Kaede had used the language “if you ever loved me”, which of course, he had. Maki knew that Shuichi had loved this backstabbing girl with everything that he was, she had seen the way he had looked at her back before the lies were exposed. He was going to let her speak.

So Maki didn’t let Shuichi let her.

Her own lips stopped his from moving.

Shuichi tensed in shock beneath Maki’s sudden embrace. His mouth had already been opening to speak, allowing her to slip her tongue in to dance with his. In the back of her mind, Maki knew that these lips had been pressed lovingly against Kaede’s not 24 hours ago, and that this tongue knew only the taste of the blonde’s saliva before now. But Shuichi wasn’t damaged goods, and neither was she. Even Maki wasn’t really a hundred percent certain why she was doing it, but she also didn’t want to stop. This kiss felt like an animalistic marking of territory, and to be doing it right in front of the person that had hurt him the most felt so. God. Damn. Good. 

After a good thirty seconds, Maki pulled away to gasp for air. A string of saliva still connected their lips as Maki turned towards the shell-shocked pianist, wiping it away with as sultry a face as she could manage, if only to establish the power dynamic between the two of them.

“Y-y-you…” was all the blonde could muster, her knees knocking together with how much she was trembling.

“Get lost, bitch,” Maki suggested simply.

Covering her face with her hands, Kaede turned and ran the opposite direction, slamming her shoulder into the fire exit and tearing off out of sight into the snow. 

“Maki?” Shuichi asked dumbly, his eyes wide with shock. 

“Sorry about that,” she sighed, suddenly feeling sheepish now that they were alone again, “I just couldn’t let you make a mistake, and you were clearly about to.”

The boy nodded slowly, “...yeah, you’re probably right. What did she look like? I didn’t see.”

“She looked like a fucking toddler who just got their favourite toy flushed down the toilet,” she exaggerated slightly, but she could tell it was what he needed.

“Good,” a grim smile broke out across the boy’s face, “Good.”

Maki pulled out her keycard and slid it through the reader to her apartment, unlocking the door with a mechanical whir.

“So… should I get out of your hair now, or…”

Shuichi’s ‘or’ had implications. Implications that Maki didn’t dislike.

“Fuck it, my couch is open,” she shrugged, “If you don’t mind sleeping without a pillow I… I’d really appreciate not being all alone right now.”

“I figured, I’m the same way,” Shuichi smiled as she led him into her apartment, “Thanks, Maki.”

“No problem.”

Maki handed him a blanket that she fished out of her linen closet, before heading off to take a long, hot shower. The water was steamy and refreshing, yet not nearly as warm as he had been when he was wrapped up in her arms.

When Maki emerged, her long hair having been let down while drying, she found Shuichi in front of her TV, browsing through Netflix. 

“Looking for something to watch?” she asked.

“Yeah, I was thinking that we could go for a few flicks instead of just friend-nodding at each other like idiots and going to bed way too early out of nothing but pride,” Shuichi smiled back.

Maki found herself grinning as she sat down next to him, her shoulder brushing up against his. 

“Sounds good enough to me,” she smiled, “What were you thinking?”

“After sifting through the space-occupying garbage and eliminating anything remotely romantic and anything on your ‘watched’ list, I’ve got two options: Zootopia and The Martian.”

Maki thought for a moment, “Zootopia sounds good, I’ve actually been meaning to watch that one.”

“Really? I thought you would shoot that down real quick.”

The girl shrugged with a smile, “Every Thursday at the orphanage was movie night, and we all looked forwards to it all week. Animated kids’ movies are kinda my guilty pleasure.”

“Alright, sounds good to me. Zootopia it is.”

“If you ever tell anyone I like kids’ movies, I will break your femurs, Shuichi.”

“Naturally.”

The movie proved to be a welcome distraction from the hole in Maki’s stomach, but with that being placed on the back burner, she was forced to focus on something else. It was bizarre, whatever this feeling was, because it certainly wasn’t when she had felt for (ugh) Kaito, but she still found herself fantasizing about the kiss she had somewhat forced on him. He hadn’t kissed back, but if that was out of shock or lack of motivation, she wasn’t sure. 

As the movie faded out, Maki found herself having at some point unconsciously sidled closer to Shuichi. Or maybe he had sidled closer to her, and she hadn’t noticed. Regardless of the perpetrator, Maki now found the back of her head resting on his shoulder instead of the headboard of the couch, their right hands brushing up against one another beside her.

“Shuichi, what’s about to happen?” she asked, moreso out of curiosity than anything else.

The detective blinked at her, “What do you mean by that?”

Maki eyed the boy for a few moments, staring back into his deep grey eyes and trying to decipher what she saw there. 

“Shuichi, are you okay?”

“No. Are you?”

“No.”

Shuichi sighed, “Maki… what do you want to do, right now?”

The girl frowned, tucking her legs up against her torso and thinking.

“...I want to feel loved again,” she eventually responded.

Shuichi nodded in agreement, settling back against the couch. The pair sat in silence for a while, maybe five minutes, as neither of them were sure if there was anything that could adequately fill the silence. Eventually though, it was Maki who broke it, voicing a sentiment that really should have surprised Shuichi much more than it did.

“Shuichi, if I asked you to fuck me, would you?”

The detective blinked at her in surprise, but not because he was surprised that she was thinking of that. He was just surprised that she had actually asked.

“Maki…” he sighed, “I’m not interested in being anybody’s rebound, even yours. I… won’t deny that it would probably make us feel better, if only for a little while, but I don’t want it if there’s nothing behind it other than that.”

“So what you’re saying is, you want to know if or not I actually have feelings for you?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

Maki nodded and stood, stepping in front of the raven-haired boy and looking down at him for a second. Then she threw her arms around his neck, pushed him back against the couch while kneeling down and straddling his lap, and pressed her lips into his again.

This time, Shuichi kissed back, and Maki was not as prepared as she thought she would be for how electrifying the sensation would be. Her heart swelled with every clash of their tongues, every slight movement only to bring them closer together. Shuichi wrapped his arms around her back, and Maki realized something. Every time that she had done this with Kaito, his hands had always been quick to roam, but Shuichi’s stayed where they were. His hands caressed the small of her back protectively, as if shielding her, and she realized exactly how much she had been missing that.

She pulled away with a gasp, panting as heat rose in her cheeks, “Does that answer your question?”

Shuichi thought for a moment, before nodding, “Just a few more questions, Maki. Do you still love Kaito?”

“No.”

“Do you love me?”

“Not yet.”

“Do you think you could?”

“Absolutely.”

Shuichi nodded, a brisk smile lighting up his features.

“My turn,” Maki whispered, “Do you still love Kaede?”

“Not more than I hate her.”

“Do you love me?”

“Not yet, no.”

“Do you think you could?”

“Not a doubt in my mind.”

No more words needed to be shared between them. Shuichi just leaned forwards and kissed her again, the deepest of the three times their lips had locked, and Maki’s world immediately shrank to encompass that couch, and nothing more. She knew she could move them to her bed, which would probably be more comfortable, but she chose not to. That bed was what she had shared with Kaito, and while it would eventually be satisfying to overwrite those memories with new ones, that wasn’t what either of them wanted their first time together to be about.

They wanted something new, something fresh. Something that didn’t relate to the pain that they were escaping from at all. And the couch, rough though it was, was perfect for that. 

Maki was only peripherally aware of the clothes between them vanishing piece by piece until she felt his warmth slide into her at last, and everything but the two loners, together on the couch, melted away.

-END-

**Author's Note:**

> Gotta be honest, this work was inspired by Riverdale. Yeah, that's weird, I know, but hear me out. I'm just sick of Archie and Betty cheating on Veronica and Jughead all the damn time and them just... getting away with it? Like, come on, even when they find out about it they always forgive them, no matter how many times it happens.
> 
> This fic was me superimposing one of my preferred Danganronpa ships onto that type of scenario, and here we are. Hope it wasn't too too terrible.
> 
> Also, if you felt bad for Kaede and/or Kaito, that was intentional. There are no sides to this story that are entirely in the right. Everyone here is damaged.


End file.
